David McElroy

I’m going to tell you a secret.

You can get far more satisfaction in your own life by bringing joy to others than you can by pursuing pleasure for yourself.

This shouldn’t be a secret, but it seems to be. Almost everyone I know spends his or her time chasing pleasure and ego satisfaction and material goods. For the most part, these people seem remarkably uninterested in making anyone else happy. They’re often indifferent to the people they claim to care about — their friends and family, even — and they’re frequently hostile to strangers.

So if it’s true that bringing joy to others is a clear path to satisfaction for you, why don’t people do that? They either don’t know this secret — or else they can’t believe it’s true.

But I’d like to suggest something simple. If you don’t believe what I’m telling you is true, why don’t you try it? Even if you’re the most selfish person you know, wouldn’t you be a fool not to test what I’m telling you?

If you could have much more life satisfaction and happiness in your life — at little real cost to you — wouldn’t that be an incredibly good deal?

Keep Reading

When I launched a YouTube channel a couple of months ago for video versions of my essays, I started inserting short parody ads into the episodes. My essays were serious, but the parodies were ridiculous and fun. At least to me.

Since these shorts have nothing much to do with the video essays — and function a bit like the cartoon shorts that used to run in theaters before movies many decades ago — I decided to set up a separate channel just for these shorts.

The whimsical conceit of the name and concept is that I’ve set up a factory to crank out silliness that is occasionally funny but always ridiculous and unnecessary. That’s why the logo shows film spooling onto a reel as it comes out of an old-fashioned industrial complex.

Keep Reading

The most painful battles I fight are with myself.

I have occasional conflicts with other people, of course, but those are easier to resolve or to ignore. I have to live with myself all the time. I have to live with the person I’ve decided to become today, but I also have to live with various versions of myself from the past. And those differing versions of me can often fight each other for control.

I’ve decided not to be argumentative and angry with other people online. It’s been a conscious decision not to live that way anymore, even though I used to have vicious verbal battles with others, on social media and on message boards before that.

I’ve learned that this sort of vicious argument doesn’t help anyone. I’ve learned that acting in those ways often makes me ignore my own values. And I’ve learned that the toxicity I can spew in one of those battles hurts me more than it hurts the person at whom the words are directed.

But when I feel attacked by someone — as I do tonight — I want to strike back. I have a foolish need to defend my pride. And I can be insecure enough to believe I need to strike back — or else other people won’t think I’m able to prove myself right.

Part of me knows that I need to walk away from such attacks, but another part of me — the person who still thinks and feels the way I used to — is eager to strike back in self-righteous anger.

The toxic inner battle between these parts of me — the person I’ve chosen to be and the person I used to be — leaves me feeling painful inner conflict about who I really am.

Keep Reading